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Dante the Theologian
Dante
the Theologian
DENYS TURNER
UK publication November 2022 US publication January 2023
9781009168700 Hardback
£29.99 / $39.99 USD / $45.99 CAD
At a glance
• Brings a novel and groundbreaking perspective to our modern interpretation of Dante • Will be required reading for advanced scholars and students of European literature and poetry, medieval studies, and theology, and will in addition engage some general readers • Denys Turner is widely acknowledged to be one of the foremost thinkers of our times in the interrelated fields of medieval theology, scholastic thought and the history of mysticism
Dante the Theologian
Denys Turner
An understanding of Dante the theologian as distinct from Dante the poet has been neglected in an appreciation of Dante’s work as a whole. That is the starting-point of this vital new book. In giving theology fresh centrality, the author argues that theologians themselves should find, when they turn to Dante Alighieri, a compelling resource: whether they do so as historians of fourteenthcentury Christian thought, or as interpreters of the religious issues of our own times. Expertly guiding his readers through the structure and content of the Commedia, Denys Turner reveals – in pacy and muscular prose – how Dante’s aim for his masterpiece is to effect what it signifies. It is this quasi-sacramental character that renders it above all a theological treatise: whose meaning is intelligible only through poetry. Turner’s Dante “knows that both poetry and theology are necessary to the essential task and that each without the other is deficient.”
Denys Turner is Horace Tracy Pitkin Professor Emeritus of Historical Theology at Yale University. His widely-acclaimed books include The Darkness of God (Cambridge University Press, 1995, which famously separated medieval mystical thought from contemporary ideas of experiential spirituality), Julian of Norwich, Theologian (Yale University Press, 2013) and Thomas Aquinas (also Yale University Press, 2014). This new book is a loosely related companion to the latter titles, completing a trilogy.
